Gray, Nethercott, and Armstrong Face Off During Debate
On Monday, state Representative Chuck Gray, state Senator Tara Nethercott, and Mark Armstrong participated in a candidate debate hosted by the Boys and Girls Club of Central Wyoming.
The debate was held for candidates running in Wyoming's Republican primary for Secretary of State and featured all three people currently running, while Dan Docksteader, who had previously been running, had dropped out early in July to endorse Nethercott.
Ed Buchanan, the current Secretary of State, is not running for re-election and was instead appointed by Governor Mark Gordon to serve as a District Court Judge for the Eighth Judicial District, in Goshen County.
The debate on Monday had the candidates answering questions posed by the moderators, along with a chance for rebuttal before moving on to another question.
The candidates were asked a variety of questions about how they would handle the job of Secretary of State, from whether they would approve charter school applications, to security regulations, to election integrity.
Each candidate was also asked about what they thought about the events on January 6 and what students should know in learning about the events of that day.
Nethercott said that what happened on Jan.
"It should never happen again. The actions on Jan. 6 were an affront to these United States," Nethercott said. "To have our own Americans attack our capital, something that we've only seen by our foreign enemies. To see that conduct was reprehensible, unacceptable, and should never happen again...this is not our future going forward and we must never go back to that place in time, understand how it happened to make sure it never happens again."
Armstrong said that there are people in jail without being charged with a crime for what they did on Jan. 6.
"Yet we have people in prison, now for Jan. 6 that have never been charged and held in solitary confinement," Armstrong said. "That is not a country our justice system wants to support."
Of the over 700 people arrested following Jan 6., all of them have been charged with various crimes.
Gray said that there is a double standard because people weren't prosecuted for the rioting that happened during the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020.
"The double standards that were involved in what happened in 2020 are very pronounced, and what happened in 2019 in the summer, led up to 2020," Gray said. "The fact that we had this rioting, and the left and the media was encouraging it, the left-wing media, they wanted it and said it was fine. No prosecutions. And yet when Jan. 6 happens, and we saw the response to that, that double standard it's so upsetting to people, and it's driven by the radical left and their allies in the mainstream media."
Following the various protests and riots in the summer of 2020, over 10,000 people were arrested.